While I managed to stay awake all yesterday and get to sleep at a normal time I woke at 1am coughing (must have picked something up from a diseased co-passenger) and have failed to get back to sleep since. :: YAWN ::
Oh well, at least I am out of the office today so I can take it easy and grab a short power-nap this afternoon if I need to. To those of you with young kids or routunes that mean you regularly have to function on a couple of hours sleep: I salute you!!!
Back from another trip down-under. I did not get to explore anything new (I stayed put in Sydney) but we did manage to head out of the city to Katoomba to see The Blue Mountains. It is well worth the 4 hour round trip on the train to see - the views are spectacular.
With mile after mile of dense trees you can see why the occassional uninitiated/inebriated walker goes missing...
After switching to new running shoes (ASICS Nimbus) I foolishly neglected taking it easy for a few runs with them - not so much to let them settle in but more to let my legs settle in. The first run was great but after the second run I picked up shin and ankle pain. So a few days of non-impact exercise and plenty of ice and heat are needed to get things back to normal.
Fingers crossed I am repaired in time to do several runs while out in Sydney - I love the run out from Milsons Point, over The Bridge, along the walkway above Circulay Quay, around the Botanic Garden, and back. Bliss!
When my running gathered momentum again I picked a nice 5K circular route and ran it slowly to get a base line time and set a target time for the route which was about 2 minutes faster than the base line. I managed to hit that goal time within 4 weeks but then almost lost all motivation since I would get demoralised when I ran the route and failed to hit the target time each and every time.
The first solution was to run the route "the other way" and this worked until I could hit the goal time in that direction too. At this point I switched to another route and it made a massive difference to my motivation. So now every few weeks I am switching to a new route, setting a new target time, and the moment I hit it I either start running the route in the opposite direction or choose another route. A simple but very effective way of keeping me motivated.
Now I am hitting longer distances fast it is time for new shoes - my venerable ASICS Kayanos are pretty much knackered (I must confess they probably were 6 months ago). Mysterious light pain in my left shin/calf has made me take a look at my feet while running and it looks like my left foot/leg/knee is less stable than my right! This is confirmed by the wear on my trainers - my right shoe is evenly worn, my left more heavily worn on the outside mid section. Weird, perhaps I need a ASIC Nimbus for my left foot, and a Kayano for my right! :P
Since I am hitting the road harder than normal I may see how things go with a pair of uber cushioned Kinsei's... If I continue to get pain in my left, or the pain moves to my right, then it could be time to get some gait analysis done and see what is up.
For the last 3 months I have been hitting the road hard in the evenings. I used to struggle to run in the evenings after work as I felt too tired to bother. However, a new routine of eating earlier and running later has made a world of difference. So now rather than heading out for a run around 18:30 and eating at 19:30, I am eating around 19:00 and running at 20:30. The "boost" from a post work rest and a meal is amazing, I am usually looking forward to getting out on the road!
Running later also has the advantages of cooler conditions, less traffic, and cars are easy to spot because they have their lights on - I can run down the middle of many of the side roads at this time of night!
Even the colder nights are not deterring me even though I hate running with lots of layers on especially the high visibility stuff. Let's see how I fare when the frost and ice starts in a month's time...
While I don't really like Autumn with its darker evenings, trees dropping leaves and everything slowing down for winter I do like new TV shows starting and old ones resuming. It is good to see that the UK has realised it has to start staying in sync with the US - the days of us waiting for a year or so to get US TV shows has gone. I am sure this change has file sharing to thank since if the networks do not make shows available viewers will simply go and get them themselves!
While I don't spend much time sitting in front of the TV watching just anything I do seem to keep up with a lot of TV shows. My justification for this is that if you keep up to date with good TV shows you will never have to go through a "Box-Set-Marathon" when you hear about a show too late! I came up with this theory after having to do both a Sopranos and The Wire marathon. Aside from keeping up to date with shows to prevent future "Box Set Marathons" I have also learned to abandon a show when you feel it has lost it.
At the moment Dexter and House are back to stunning form, and CSI has really been refreshed with Laurence Fishburne's arrival and a slight reworking of the format. Unfortunately Supernatural is drain circling - I will give it one more episode to pull itself together, if not I will abandon it.
Like a majority of people I agree that Flashforward is the hot new show - hopefully it will not do a "Lost" and become too contrived, too long and forget to reward the viewer.
Anywho - I am now off to sweep up some leaves, then give Supernatural a last chance...
Seven days on antibiotics ahead of a root canal are almost up. The antibiotics will have cleared up any infection but the tooth pain caused by the crack would have been mind bending without Clove Oil. After a couple of days of exquisite pain, especially when eating and drinking, I recalled that scene from Marathon Man, but not for the torture instead for the relief Hoffman's character gets from Clove Oil. I was amazed that Clove Oil was both stocked by the chemist and sold as a dental pain killer. I was even more amazed at how fast and effective Clove Oil is at calming nerve related pain... Since using it a couple of times a day I have had no discomfort at all.
It is of course only a temporary relief since it does not solve the underlying problem so the root canal is still on for tomorrow.
Just after shaking a very flu like bug (no fever so probably not swine flu) I manage to crack a pre-molar tooth. This little sod had already been substantially filled after an undetected cavity wrecked it so the only way to "save" the tooth is a root canal. Nice. But if it has cracked from cap to tip then it is a write off and it will have to be extracted. Nicer still. If that happens it will be 6 to 9 months of hassle (and more than a few ££££) getting an implant.
Oh well, 7 days on anti-biotics means a week off the beer (no bad thing), the drugs will probably clear up any nasty bacteria nonsense going on inside me, and the tooth has been giving me a bit of pain for a few months so if it is root canalled or extracted it is not going to be causing me any more pain. So, it could be worse.
